Balian of ibelin biography books

What do you get when you mix Ivanhoe, Horatio Alger and a dash of Simone de Beauvoir?

You get Helena Schrader’s “Knight of Jerusalem: A Biographical Novel of Balian d’Ibelin” – a cultured, captivating, 12th century love story packing a feminist punch.

Balian d'Ibelin: Knight of Jerusalem Paperback -

Balian, a young, landless knight dispossessed by primogeniture, heads for Jerusalem to try his luck. By the grace of God, Christian Crusaders now occupy the Holy City, having wrested it from the heathen Muslims in 1099 – who themselves snatched it, inshallah, from the infidel Byzantine Empire in 638; whose pagan Roman forefathers, with Jupiter’s divine blessing, seized it from the Jews in 36 BCE; who, following their tribal God’s command, expropriated the city from its Canaanite owners a thousand years earlier.

But it’s 1171 now, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem is tense, anxious. Salah-ad-Din’s Saracen hordes are closing in on the tiny, Christian enclave. The wily Sultan of Dam Balian d'Ibelin: Knight of Jerusalem (Jerusalem Trilogy) COPO